OlympicIRL

Certainly, and when the commentator cannot help you out then it is very confusing and ultimately frustrating.

I wonder why they don't make the balls more distinguishable, clear difference in colour for example..... would make it way more spectator friendly.

The commentator is of no help whatsoever in determining the situation of play... he keeps mixing up which team owns which balls

I am watching Madagascar v Thailand in the boules... the quality and skill of those players is incredible, so accurate with shots and tactics

By the way, why is there only one person listed as part of our Men's 700kg Tug of War team?.... impressive if he is a one-man team

Thanks Well yes, looks like Tug of War is where I need to be then . So we compete in a grand total of 5 events, really impressive .

Is there somewhere you can find list of athletes by sport? I have no idea who is competing for Ireland or which sports. I checked wikipedia just to be sure and apparently we have some athletes here

That's a clever way of getting your swimmers to go a bit faster, add some piranhas to the pool

The 100k milestone reached, but still a long way to go and with time running out. Come on Jonty and Art

No Makhloufi at the Worlds this year, he's out with a calf injury

Great opening day for us, really unexpected!

Glad to hear it

For Ireland, practically all of Europe is Eastern Europe

Congrats Mexico

Nope, a disaster. Though I award him some bonus points for managing to stay on the board after pulling out of the dive at the last moment

WR and wonderful performance by Sam Kinghorn!

They have a two-pronged attack.... buy the best athletes and according to BBC investigation prior to London 2012, they also pay money to buy some guaranteed golds: https://www.google.ie/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/sport/2011/sep/23/boxing-azerbaijan-medals-cash

I've done my bit, I hope we can make it a happy ending for Jonty and Art.

Thank you everyone for your words of comfort, it is very much appreciated.

This has been a tough week for me. Some of you may have noticed that I have a picture of my dog, Benny, on my profile page. In fact when I was on the old forum, I had a photo of Benny as my avatar. I am very sad to tell you that this week I had to make the very tough decision of letting Benny go. He was injured a few weeks ago in a car accident and he suffered an injury to his back. He was given medication and rest and I was hoping and praying that he would be able to recover. As the second week passed it became clear that Benny was not progressing and a decision would have to be made. One more week but it was no good. He was made as comfortable as possible after his accident but I hard to make the awful decision of deciding that it was best to let him go. I am heartbroken and as much as I tried to distract myself for the last couple of weeks, it didn't prepare me for having to say goodbye . I am sorry if I have not replied to any messages and have not been updating any threads these last few days. I will be back on top of things soon. Here is a couple of pics to share with you of my lovely Benny.... he was a wonderful and loyal friend.

Another gold for Mona McSharry today, this time in women's 100m breaststroke.... 2 golds and 1 silver for her, what a championships for Mona! Overall a great championships for our team, 2 golds and 2 silvers and a 4th place in the mixed relay. Hopefully Mona and Conor can keep it going into the worlds and the world juniors. It will be another big step up but good to see we have some new talents at least.

It's wonderful to see that there is still so many athletes who have been at all the Olympics in this century.... and a whole bunch more who have an even longer longevity despite missing the odd one in between. And also, the range of sports is incredible too I am slowly adding all those that you have posted here plus those that I have found through researching a bit. It'll be interesting to see how many of these wonderful athletes can make it to Tokyo. I bet even one of them medals there!

One mind-boggling fact I discovered while doing this research.... Belarussian shooter Kanstantsin Lukashyk won Olympic gold all the way back in Barcelona 1992 and competed in every edition thereafter with the exception of Rio 2016..... not that this alone isn't impressive, but what I found absolutely mind bending is the fact that he is still only 41 years old .

Thanks for all the replies everyone, keep them coming

Kim Collins was close but he missed London 2012 at the last moment due to a dispute with his national federation. St.Kitts and Nevis had a great shot at a relay medal that year.